The present invention relates to a method of inspecting and/or controlling a process of metallization of a surface, and to a device for carrying out the method.
Prior art methods for inspecting metallization processes have been limited mostly to a bath analysis or to electrochemical, cyclic volt-ampere measurements. The known methods permit only a very indirect determination of the metallization bath quality and of the properties of the metallized layer. In the analytical method it cannot be guaranteed that all process relevant chemical compounds have been included; in practice it has been found that heaved up, frequently unknown compounds produce extraordinary problems for the quality of the deposited metallization layers. Moreover, due to the large number of compounds which participate in the determination of the quality of the deposited layers, a process control based on the concentration of individual components is very problematic.
The method of the cyclic volt-ampere measurements in which primarily the redissolving of a minute amount of the deposition on an inner electrode is tested, represents a more direct approach to the processes on the electrodes. However this method delivers directly interpretable data which could be used for controlling the metallization process only in very limited scope and, in addition, is susceptible to interferences caused by even the smallest contaminants.